Over 400 Iowa farmers have filed objections to threats of eminent domain and are opposing and protesting the 1,200-mile carbon-capture pipeline system across five Midwest states to a permanent sequestration site in North Dakota.
Three companies, Valero Energy Corporation, BlackRock Global Energy & Power Infrastructure Fund II, and Navigator Energy Services, together, have teamed up with an Ames, Iowa, company, Summit Carbon Solutions, whose senior advisor is Terry Branstad, former Iowa Governor and Ambassador to China.
Carbon dioxide has many useful roles in the modern economy, not to mention as plant food, and the infrastructure for CO2 includes, in some locations, pipelines and storage capacity. However, the three green CO2 pipeline proposals now rightly contested in the Midwest states, centered in Iowa, are not only not useful; they are crazy and unproductive in the extreme. They should be cancelled immediately.
The four companies have CO2 capture agreements with 31 biofuels plants and 20 fertilizer and ethanol plants, to transport their CO2 to a destination where it will be sequestered underground. In the course of this, CO2 burial certificates will be available as carbon credits for sale to other entities needing them, such as in California. This will supposedly benefit farmers by making the ethanol plants “green,” ensuring that their corn will still have a market. Those pushing the scheme say that without it, the ethanol plants may be shut down.
